It’s incredibly important that you choose the right professional employer organization (PEO) to support your Oklahoma business and help it grow.
The right PEO will take care of your HR paperwork and tasks so that you’re free to focus on your company and complete those tasks on your to-do list that keep adding up.
The wrong PEO will not only cost you time and energy, but also cause a lot of headache and leave you without the financial and mental resources to give your company the focus it deserves.
I assessed more than 900 different professional employer organizations in Oklahoma, completed an in-depth investigation of the top 15, then rated the top 9 to find the best Oklahoma PEO.
But before I dive into my recommendations, there’s something you should know.
The Best PEO Isn't Always the Right PEO
I’ve spent multitudinous hours looking into over 900 PEO companies to identify the best PEO in Oklahoma by choosing the PEO with the highest score across a variety of criteria. But just because my top choice earned the highest overall score doesn’t automatically mean it’s the best PEO for your company.
- Some PEOs have immense experience with certain business industries, so they can provide special benefits and unique services to business in those sectors.
- Some PEOs have developed good professional relationships with insurance providers, so they can offer benefits and insurance at reduced prices.
- Some PEOs specialize in compliance and offer a variety of products and services to ensure that your company meets state and federal guidelines.
Compare your company’s needs with the key features and services of each professional employer organization (PEO). This ensures that you won’t simply choose the best overall PEO but will instead choose the best PEO for your Oklahoma business based on factors that matter the most to you.
If you’d like to receive a free business analysis to tell you more about your business needs, as well as a custom PEO recommendation for your Oklahoma business, then enter your information below. After your form is submitted, I’ll contact you within 24 hours with your free business analysis and PEO recommendation.
If you’d rather just learn which PEO company earned the highest score, keep reading to find out about my best Oklahoma PEO recommendations.
1. Flexible PEO – 9.5/10 (Best Overall PEO)
Flexible pushes PEO Companies down to second place on this Oklahoma PEO list for one big reason and that's customer support. Flexible's customer support and commitment to customer care sets them apart from the other PEOs on this list.
Pros
Flexible PEO, like PEO Companies, provides a complete array of services. Health insurance, benefits packages, benefits administration, payroll processing, compliance assistance, risk mitigation, workers’ compensation, and more are all available.
They provide good value prices and a user-friendly interface for getting started with their system.
However, the one area they really excelled in was customer service. In the three different customer service tests I conducted, the average response time to customer service emails was 46 minutes, and the average wait time to talk with a customer service representative on the phone was less than 2 minutes.
Their assistance was not only prompt but also extremely efficient. They were able to address my problems without transferring me to another agent (and making me repeat my problem again) or involving a manager.
While they haven’t yet sent me a holiday card, it’s the only thing their customer service could have done to enhance their service and my customer satisfaction. Their customer service is a definite 10/10.
Cons
Flexible's system is simple to use and their cost is reasonable.
There were however times when their system was a little confusing, and I had to call their excellent customer service to figure out how to navigate it. Flexible's costs are excellent for their services, however, the three bids I got for three fake companies were all roughly 10% more than PEO Companies.
Most people wouldn’t consider these deal breakers, especially if you’re looking for good customer service. Flexible's pricing is still highly competitive.
Overall
Flexible is a fantastic professional employer organization that checks a lot of boxes. They provide a complete range of goods and services at affordable prices, as well as spectacular customer service. Their system isn’t always the most user-friendly, and they’re somewhat more costly than PEO Companies, but they’re still my top choice.
As with any professional employer organization, their cost is dependent on your requirements and size, so fill in your information here to receive a detailed quote: Flexible PEO.
2. PEO Companies — 9/10 (Best Range of Options)
My #2 recommendation is PEO Companies. They’re a solid and reliable option with great pricing, but some areas didn't so much let me down but they didn't wow me either.
Pros
They provide all the products and services you’d expect from a PEO:
- Human resources paperwork
- Employee benefits
- Tax withholding
- Compliance assistance
- Tax rates
- Payroll
- 401k
- Employee contracts
- Dental insurance
- Risk management
- Health insurance
- Workers' compensation insurance
- Administrative services
- Employee benefits administration
- HR support
They also have solid customer support to back it up. You can get an email response within 24 hours if you have a general question, or if you have an urgent issue you can simply pick up the phone and call them.
One of the best features is that while it has the technological capabilities to meet the needs of large organizations, their specific focus is on small-to-medium enterprises.
This means they can meet you where you are and scale up to where you want to be.
Cons
The only real negative (if you can call it that) is that they don’t do anything exceptionally well.
- Their product offerings cover everything you need, but don't include any high-end, exotic options.
- Their customer support will answer every question as soon as you ask, but they won’t do anything crazy like send you a birthday card on your birthday.
- Their pricing isn't as low as some others, but it's solid and they’re more than competitive in the PEO landscape. But they’re not priced so low that they’re going to put themselves out of business just to help you.
The company is great across the board, but don’t have any one standout feature that will blow your mind.
Overall
PEO Companies is my #2 choice because they do everything you need and they do it well. They offer a full suite of products and services at more-than-competitive prices with excellent support to back it up.
3. CoAdvantage — 7.90/10 (Best Value PEO)
CoAdvantage is my #3 recommendation, but that doesn’t mean they’re not a good option. They offer excellent value so they're a good choice if you're particularly cost-conscious.
Pros
Just like Flexible and PEO Companies, CoAdvantage offers a full range of products and services. You can get insurance and onboarding and payroll and tax management and everything in between.
They have competitive pricing and while their technology offering doesn't wow, it's adequate and appropriate for the price point.
Cons
There were some instances where their system was unclear and I needed to call customer support to work out how to navigate my way around. CoAdvantage’s support is pretty average. Wait times are variable and while you will get there in the end, it's not a selling point.
Overall
CoAdvantage is a good PEO that ticks many boxes. They offer a full range of products and services and do so at more than competitive pricing. If you need value for money, they are definitely worth a look.
As with every PEO, their pricing is based on your needs and size so to get a full quote, fill in your details here: CoAdvantage.
4. Justworks
Justworks is new to the Oklahoma professional employer organization world, launching in 2012. It’s currently growing to supply services to businesses all across the nation.
Like the other Oklahoma professional employer organizations on the list, Justworks offers a range of basic services, such as health insurance, benefits packages for your employees, workers’ compensation, payroll services, compliance alerts, and other solutions to manage your employees and provide human resources support. But it also provides something that no other Oklahoma PEO does: transparency.
Justworks lists its pricing structure publicly on its website, so everyone can access it. This is refreshing because most Oklahoma professional employer organizations go out of their way to obscure their pricing structures and force potential clients to participate in sales calls to get quotes.
The reason Jusgtworks is #4 on my list is that it’s so young. The age of a professional employer organization is important because going through the setup process is a lot of hard work and it takes a long time to complete, so most Oklahoma business owners can’t afford to repeat the process over and over simply because they chose a start-up PEO that suddenly ceases business operations.
I recommend that you wait a few years before choosing to partner with Justworks so that it has some time to establish itself in the industry and prove that it’s going to be around for the long haul.
5. Infiniti HR
Infiniti HR is an Oklahoma professional employer organization that’s managed to find a way to stand out in the crowded field that is the Oklahoma PEO market.
It offers a full range of PEO services, such as human resources paperwork and support, payroll processing, workers’ compensation, a variety of insurance offerings and employee benefits packages, and other tools and services to help you manage your employees. But it also exceeds expectations by offering to help with employee recruitment for your organization.
If you’ve ever been fortunate enough to have one really good employee, then you know that it only takes one good employee to have a positive effect on the entire organization. So the fact that Infiniti HR offers a service to put you in contact with the right prospective employees in Oklahoma is a huge bonus.
The downside I see with Infiniti is the same as with Justworks: it’s not old enough. It doesn't have a storied history or a decades-old established reputation to prove that it’s going to stick around. So, I would give Infiniti a few years to establish itself in the Oklahoma PEO market before partnering up with it.
6. TriNet
TriNet is the PEO that has been around the longest and has the most experience. This pioneer professional employer organization launched its nationwide business in 1988, and since then the organization has grown to include more than 16,000 companies and over 330,000 employees under its vast corporate umbrella.
It offers all the PEO and human resources services that Oklahoma business owners need to manage their employees and handle HR tasks. However, it seems to rely on the big name and reputation it’s developed over the decades to draw in new clients, rather than offering quality products and services that are appealing to potential clients.
This means that it offers decent customer service, but it doesn’t offer any customer service touches that will bowl you over. Innovation isn’t at the forefront of TriNet’s operations, as the company doesn't provide new products or services to solve existing and known problems. Its sales team won’t go out of their way to impress you or earn new clients, either. This is because the organization knows it doesn’t need you. If it doesn’t earn your business, it’ll still earn enough new clients based on its big name and reputation to break even.
So even though TriNet is a trusted, reliable, and tested professional organization, it will never blow your mind or exceed industry standards with some new product or service.
7. PayChex
PayChex is another solid Oklahoma professional employer organization. It was originally named Oasis Outsourcing and had been in business servicing small businesses in Oklahoma, as well as across the nation, for more than 20 years. But PayChex recently acquired Oasis. PayChex still supports Oasis for business owners who had already partnered with Oasis, but new clients signing up will partner with PayChex PEO instead.
PayChex offers all the basic PEO and human resources services that Oklahoma business owners need, like assistance with HR paperwork and tasks, various types of insurance and employee benefits packages, payroll processing, and other tools and services to help your organization keep health insurance costs low and manage employees. It also offers a slew of industry-specific services for Oklahoma businesses in specific industries, such as education, hospitality, retail, and banking (just to name a few).
The reason PayChex is so low on my list is that it forces each potential client to sign a 12-month contract.
The entire PEO industry, not just those in Oklahoma, seems to run off of month-to-month contracts, so the fact that PayChex locks new customers into 12-month contracts right off the bat is both bizarre and unnecessary. Obviously, it lost some points for that.
8. ADP Totalsource
ADP Totalsource is a huge professional employer organization that not only serves Oklahoma businesses, but also businesses in more than 140 different countries around the world. Just like the other professional employer organizations on my list, it offers all the basics you need to manage your employees and offers a number of industry-specific options that provide unique benefits and solutions for Oklahoma businesses in certain sectors.
The main benefit of ADP Totalsource’s services is that, as the business owner, you’re not the only one with access to the customer service team. If your employees have any questions about their pay, benefits, or any other HR concerns, they have access to ADP’s customer service team and can call them directly. Giving your employees access to the customer service team means that there’s less tedious work for you to do and you won’t have to act as a go-between for your employees and ADP. This is a boon for any Oklahoma business owner.
The problem that I have with ADP is the same problem that I have with TriNet. If you own a small business in Oklahoma, then your small business will be just a drop in the sea of other huge companies that it serves. This means that your organization will never get the support and attention from its PEO that it needs for success and growth.
9. Insperity
I had a lot of high hopes for Insperity, an Oklahoma professional employer organization, but it was ultimately a disappointment.
Like the other Oklahoma PEOs on my list, it offers everything necessary to cover your HR needs. The company has won awards for the past 30 years for its products and services, as well as its customer support, which led me to believe that it provided a superior Oklahoma PEO experience. Then I found out that the company allows clients to cancel their services at any time (so long as you provide them with 30 days’ notice), and I was even more excited.
But as I continued my research, I found one area that changed my mind about the entire organization: health care.
As an Oklahoma business owner, you already know what an important issue health care is. Because the health care needs of your employees are as unique as they are, choosing the right health insurance and employee benefits packages is difficult and requires a lot of options and choices.
But, for whatever reason, Insperity only offers health care options from one insurance provider. Why? I have no idea. I never found any reasonable answer to this in my research. It’s just the way it is.
So the reason Insperity is last on my list is that if you choose to partner your Oklahoma business with this professional employer organization, it’s quite likely that your employees won’t get the coverage they need due to the limited insurance options that Insperity provides.
The Best PEO for Your Business
There are more than 900 different professional employer organization companies for Oklahoma business owners to choose from, which can make choosing the right organization difficult.
I’ve spent more than 230 hours during the past six years assessing the Oklahoma PEO industry, and it’s led me to identify the best Oklahoma PEO companies: Vensure, CoAdvantage, and PEO Companies.
These PEO companies should be great choices for most Oklahoma businesses, but to choose the right PEO to meet the unique needs of your organization in Oklahoma, you need a custom recommendation based on a few specific factors:
- The number of employees on your payroll
- What you want the PEO to help with (payroll, HR compliance, workers’ compensation insurance, etc.)
- Employee benefits you want to offer to your team (such as health insurance and workers’ compensation insurance)
- How much you can afford to spend on employee benefits
- The location of your small business
- The location where you conduct your business (if outside the office)
- How much customer support you will need
- Your technological capabilities
- How large you plan to scale
- Your industry
If you would like to find the right PEO for your company, simply enter your details below and I will provide a free assessment of your company needs.
The Best PEO Selection Process
I used a painstaking process to choose the best professional employer organization in Oklahoma. But before I tell you about that, you should learn more about me so you’ll know why you can trust my recommendations.
Why You Should Trust Me
The reason you can trust any PEO recommendation I make is that I know the Oklahoma PEO industry better than nearly anyone else—including some people who work for the Oklahoma PEOs on my list. I gained this knowledge both through experiences with my own Oklahoma businesses and from helping other Oklahoma business owners find the right PEOs to support the success of their companies.
I began learning about Oklahoma PEO companies with my first business, an online health company. I was completely overwhelmed with learning all the things I needed to stay on top of to run an online business, like creating websites, writing articles, and managing my employees. This meant I didn’t have the time or the energy to deal with all the HR tasks that were cluttering my daily to-do lists.
To alleviate my workload, I first tried hiring a staffing company to manage my employees, but that wasn’t enough to solve all my HR problems. Eventually, I partnered with a great Oklahoma professional employer organization that supported my company and led to its overall success and growth.
After dealing with all that, I decided to take a break between closing my online health company and starting my next business venture: a cafe! To say that running an online health company and a cafe are different is a vast understatement.
But even though the two Oklahoma businesses were so different in comparison to each other, I still had one common problem with them both: HR woes. This time I was prepared, though. Equipped with my knowledge about PEOs from my first business, I went to work searching for the best Oklahoma PEO for my business. I searched websites, thoroughly read online reviews, and impatiently listened to lengthy and boring sales pitches when all I wanted was answers to simple questions. It was a LOT of information to process. But, in the end, this research allowed me to choose an organization to support my business.
It wasn’t long until I found that I don’t have the right personality for the hospitality industry. So I closed my cafe and took another break to carefully consider what I should do next. The answer just came to me when friends from both my online health company and my cafe approached me with questions about how to handle their back-end operations.
As I made more recommendations, more Oklahoma business owners requested recommendations from me. Eventually, I started writing each recommendation down. Since then, I’ve helped more than 1,200 Oklahoma business owners find the right professional employer organization providers for their companies, and this experience as an advisor, coupled with my personal experience as a business owner, has provided me with more experience with the Oklahoma PEO industry than nearly anyone else.
- Best PEO Delaware
- Best PEO Maryland
- Best PEO Virginia
- Best PEO West Virginia
- Best PEO Kentucky
- Best PEO North Carolina
- Best PEO South Carolina
- Best PEO Georgia
- Best PEO Florida
- Best PEO Alabama
- Best PEO Mississippi
- Best PEO Tennessee
- Best PEO Louisiana
- Best PEO Arkansas
- Best PEO Texas
- Best PEO Oklahoma
How I Selected the Best PEO
I used a four-stage investigative process to whittle away at a list of more than 900 different professional employer organization providers and leave me with a short list of quality PEOs.
Stage 1: Reviews
The first stage of my investigation involved reading online reviews.
These days, any Oklahoma PEO that’s been in business for more than a year should have accumulated a good bit of online feedback from its customers. And it’s this online feedback that I use to find out which Oklahoma PEOs were worthy of further investigation, and which ones were subpar and could be eliminated from my investigation before I spent too much time on them.
I checked out reviews on major online review platforms to find out which Oklahoma PEO companies didn’t live up to the basic industry standards in terms of services, pricing, and customer support, then eliminated them from further consideration on my list.
Stage 2: Offering Analysis
Unfortunately, the services offered by all Oklahoma PEOs are not the same. Each Oklahoma PEO offers different services and different prices for those services.
So the second stage of my investigation involved researching the services offered by each Oklahoma PEO and the price points of each Oklahoma PEO. This allowed me to find out whether an Oklahoma PEO offered basic services or good rates and eliminate any PEO that offered substandard services or overly expensive rates.
Stage 3: Speaking with Real Customers
Of course, online reviews are enough to provide me with a general overview of each Oklahoma PEO’s services and its quality, but they have two significant limitations.
The first is that most customers won’t even leave an online review unless they’ve had either a glowingly positive or a horrifically negative experience with an Oklahoma PEO. This means that if you were to base your opinions about an Oklahoma PEO solely on online reviews, they would be greatly polarized and you wouldn’t get the whole picture.
The second is that most popular online review platforms don’t allow customers to leave reviews longer than 200 characters. This isn’t enough information for customers to fully express all the information necessary to determine whether an Oklahoma PEO is worth partnering with.
To get around the limitations of online reviews, I decided to speak to customers directly. I did this by reaching out to people I knew who had used Oklahoma PEOs, customers to whom I’d made Oklahoma PEO recommendations, and visitors to my website.
I asked them detailed questions, and they gave me lengthy and well-thought-out responses that helped me to get a better idea of what it’s like to work with each Oklahoma PEO company.
Stage 4: Speaking with Their Sales Teams
The last stage of my investigation involved talking to each Oklahoma PEO’s sales or customer service teams.
I gathered all the issues, negative feedback, and bad reviews I’d collected during my investigation and asked sales and customer service teams about them. This was important to help me understand what it’s like to work with each Oklahoma PEO on a long-term basis. Do they make efforts to innovate and change, or are they stubborn and seemingly afraid of change? Do they accept responsibility for their mistakes, or do they attempt to blame their customers for their slip-ups? The answers to these questions really separated the best Oklahoma PEO companies from the rest.
Ranking Factors
There were five factors that I used to evaluate each Oklahoma PEO to ultimately identify the best PEO.
Factor 1: Offerings
The first ratings factor was based on each Oklahoma PEO’s service offerings.
It doesn’t make sense to partner with an Oklahoma PEO with the expectation of receiving a specific type of health insurance if the Oklahoma PEO you chose doesn’t offer that type of insurance. So, to make sure that you choose an Oklahoma PEO that meets your needs, I created a comprehensive list of each Oklahoma PEO’s services and used it as a rating factor.
Factor 2: Price
The second factor I used to rate each Oklahoma PEO was price.
Prices vary widely from different Oklahoma PEOs. Two different Oklahoma PEOs could offer the same services and charge drastically different prices for these identical services. And to make it all worse, they typically hide this pricing information behind a sales call. So, my second rating factor was not only the services that each Oklahoma PEO offers, but the value for those services it provides.
Factor 3: Ease of Sign-Up
The third factor I used to evaluate each Oklahoma PEO was how easy it is to get signed up with its system.
Some Oklahoma PEOs will make you spend weeks searching everywhere for bits of obscure information that were ultimately unnecessary. Then there are Oklahoma PEOs that gain the majority of the information they need about your company from government agencies, which automates the process and speeds it up.
To make sure you don’t choose an Oklahoma PEO that wastes your time during the sign-up process, I rated each company based on how quick and easy it is to complete its onboarding process.
Factor 4: Ease of Use
The fourth rating factor I considered was how easy each Oklahoma PEO’s system is to use.
There are some Oklahoma PEOs that have obviously spent millions of dollars and untold hours to provide their customers with a streamlined, easy-to-navigate system with a simple and sleek interface. Then there are others who have ancient servers and rather than updating their servers or their system, they just add on new features and then write gigantic user manuals in an attempt to explain their complex navigation systems.
Of course, it’s preferable to choose an Oklahoma PEO with an easy-to-use system, rather than an archaic, complicated system, so I rated each Oklahoma PEO based on how easy its system is to use.
Factor 5: Customer Service
No matter how much time and money an Oklahoma PEO spends to make sure its system is easy to use, customers will eventually have questions about services or run into problems with the system. It’s during these instances that customer service quality is important.
Some Oklahoma PEOs require you to stay on the line for hours just to finally be connected with an agent who is bored and under-trained, who can’t help you fix your problem, and who promises to escalate it to management then never does. Then there are other Oklahoma PEOs who will answer your call and connect you with an agent within minutes and solve your problems quickly so that you can get on with the rest of your day.
The Best PEO for Your Business
Even though Vensure is the best PEO choice for most Oklahoma businesses, there’s no way for me to make an accurate PEO recommendation for your business without having more knowledge about it.
I need to know things like what industry your business is in, the size of your company, how many employees you have, the type of benefits you’d like to offer, and more before I can make a proper PEO recommendation.
If you’re interested in receiving a free business analysis and PEO recommendation, fill out and submit the form below.
Once you’ve submitted the form, I’ll respond to you within 24 hours with your free business analysis and customized PEO recommendation for your business.
While you’re here looking into PEO services, it’s a good time to think about the structure of your business. You have several options to choose from, such as a sole proprietorship, corporation or limited liability company (LLC). If you’re interested in learning more about how to form an LLC, read my article, How to Start an Oklahoma LLC.
You may also wish to consider registered agent services. A registered agent is a person or business entity that accepts mail, service of process, and legal documents on behalf of your business. If you’re interested in learning more about registered agents, read my article, the 12 Best Oklahoma Registered Agents.
Frequently Asked Questions
How much does it cost to use a PEO?
The price of a PEO can vary widely depending on a number of different factors. This can include the PEO you choose, the services you use, the employee benefits you offer, and the number of employees you have. But on average, $1,000–$2,000 per employee per month is a good base number to start with.
How does a PEO charge?
There are two different fee structures used by PEO service providers: flat fee or percentage of payroll.
A flat fee structure charges you a set amount per employee. This is a good option for any business that requires a high level of certainty around their monthly billing.
A percentage of payroll structure is where the PEO charges you a percentage of the wages you pay your employees per month. This is a good option for employers in low-wage industries.
How long does it take to get set up with a PEO?
The setup process for any small business with PEO service providers takes time. They need lots of paperwork from your end and then need to file plenty more with government authorities to get you up and running.
This process can take anywhere between three and six weeks but on average, it usually takes four weeks.
Does it cost to change PEOs?
There are no specific exit fees associated with any of the PEOs we’ve recommended in this article, but due to the extensive setup process, every PEO charges a setup fee. This means that if you decide to leave your PEO for a new PEO, you won’t be charged anything to leave but you will have to pay the setup fee with the new PEO.